


Resurrected

by Water_Slime (Fire_Slime)



Category: Bleach (anime dub)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't Post To Another Site, F/M, Family, Family Bonding, Friendship, Gen, Reincarnation, other things I'm forgetting, unpredictable posting schedule
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29214216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Slime/pseuds/Water_Slime
Summary: The almost-obligatory Ichigo-is-Kaien's reincarnation fic that is abandoned two or three chapters in.  This one might last longer; I make no guarantees, one way or the other.  Accordingly, not all tags above may be relevant yet (or ever, if we never reach that point).Starts in that first confrontation between Ichigo and Renji.
Relationships: Ichigo Kurosaki & "Hollow Ichigo", Ichigo Kurosaki & Ganju Shiba & Kukaku Shiba, Ichigo Kurosaki & Jushiro Ukitake, Ichigo Kurosaki & Nejibana, Ichigo Kurosaki & Nelliel Tu Oderschvank, Kaien Shiba/Miyako Shiba, Orihime Inoue/Ichigo Kurosaki, Renji Abarai/Rukia Kuchiki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. The Waning Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the thing: I said, "Well, I'll never post any fics to The Archive unless I was starting to post them for real to FF.net". But, I'd also said, "This fic, here, has no real chance of being completed. Maybe it will be anyway; maybe not, but we'll just post as we go here." Functionally, that means that I'd never be able to post this fic to The Archive, but somehow that failed to compute in my mind.  
> Screw that. Here it is.  
> Watch me defy The Archive's tagging system to my own detriment. You must realise by now that I'm stubborn.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zangetsu's last moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> author's note: Every Ichigo-is-Kaien-Shiba-reincarnation-fic enthusiast is almost contractually required to start one of these. The rules are few. It has to:  
> 1\. acknowledge nothing that took place after the end of the Soul Society part (Arrancar at the very latest)  
> 2\. stop updating after the first two or three chapters  
> 3\. have a short (ideally one-word) title with obvious meaning
> 
> I think I can do that.  
> (I lost chapter one, what I had written of it, a decade ago after Word crashed, lying that it had autosaved my documents. Yeah, right. All of the writing dates to 2009, accordingly. I'll explain why that's important, somewhere, at some point. Maybe.)

Even though he was shouting, he didn't seem able to make himself heard. He had borne it as well as he could, silently grabbing any means of support he could, so as not to be pushed sideways off his building when the rain fell. It wasn't that there was any danger to it, really; this was just his own personal battle against the symbolic weather. He hated the rain; born of his wielder's own soul, he shared the same bitter associations of grief and helplessness.

He had been yelling, trying to catch his wielder's attention, ever since he had been born from the wintry harshness of Rukia's blade. He knew it was hopeless when Ichigo was in his human body, but, when he was out of that body, Zangetsu had hoped that he might be able to make himself heard. He had tried everything from insults to advice to simply screaming his own name over and over, but all evidence pointed to Ichigo simply not hearing. And now, it was almost certainly too late.

He always knew by virtue of his connection to Ichigo just what was happening in the outside world. He knew, almost intuitively, that Ichigo was in over his head. Ichigo had proven during that competition of Uryu's that he had no ability to sense spiritual pressure. He had no idea how powerful his opponent really was.

That wasn't all that Ichigo hadn't known. If Zangetsu had doubted Ichigo's deafness before, he wouldn't have upon feeling the ripple of surprise when he learned about the names of zanpakuto.

" _What? Are you telling me you guys_ name _your swords?"_

The lieutenant had been understandably insulted; Zangetsu felt much the same as must have Zabimaru. Zangetsu could sense Ichigo's potential—how could he be so incompetent in so many areas?

And now Ichigo was dying. Zangetsu could _feel_ it. But strangely, it seemed his proximity to death thinned the barrier dividing the two of them. Without hesitation, Zangetsu reached through the barrier, pouring his strength into Ichigo's body, which started to glow with Zangetsu's blue spiritual pressure. Perhaps they could still turn this battle around. Perhaps they could still win.

For his part, all that Ichigo noticed was that, courtesy of Zangetsu's boost of speed and reaction times, Lieutenant Abarai seemed to be moving more slowly. He took advantage of this, unconsciously borrowing Zangetsu's energy and letting Zangetsu guide him with stern commands that weakened to gentle nudges in the right direction as they passed the barrier dividing him from Ichigo.

By the time he realised what was happening, it was too late. He had forgotten the other soul reaper, the aloof prince who stood out of the way, evidently content to watch his subordinate fight the stranger. But then, just as Ichigo leapt into the air to deliver the finishing blow, he _moved_.

A thousand flower petals, each the size of a small house, burst in upon Zangetsu's world, Ichigo's inner world, breaking Zangetsu's concentration and severing his connection to Ichigo. Zangetsu saw the pink petals reflecting the light from the stormy sky, shining impossibly bright, despite the rain. They travelled aimlessly, in a casual, uninterested way, and where they went, they left destruction in their wake. They were sharp, filled with a deadly beauty. They cut easily through steel skyscrapers and glass windows, cut clean through concrete, and tore open the sky itself.

In a matter of minutes, Ichigo's inner world had been cut into confetti, leaving an emptiness behind. And Zangetsu.

And then he saw it—no pink petal this time, but a sword, recognisable as such, which was pointed straight at him. A sword that could have crushed him like an insect, with a blade so thin he could see both sides of it from where he stood. Zangetsu had no choice—he just stood there. He felt nothing, except perhaps a sort of vague joy that it had stopped raining, as the sword approached. Then, there was nothing.


	2. Only the Dead May Live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo and the Shattered Shaft. And Starlit Sea. And meeting Nejibana. Basically, it's like the first time he enters Sideways City, only not. Hope that clears everything up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. I kind of did a super-fail job at describing the Three Kinds of Battles (especially Kaien's), but I'm sure you guys know it all, anyway. Maybe if I can figure out how to write it more clearly, I'll come back and fix this, yeah?  
> I did the thing where I haven't written for a while so I go work on something I haven't written much (or any) of because for some reason I write better when there isn't enough of the story to compare it to, but there is still the occasional hiccup. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
> 
> Here is a further note: Really, this belonged on the previous chapter, but it's here instead.  
> See here, this fic is really old, and then it's all retrograde on top of that. The cutoff for material it's allowed to draw from is probably about to the point where Orihime gets kidnapped, but I borrowed some stuff from Turn Back the Pendulum, because that was win, and it made me appreciate characters I'd hated before. I'm stubborn, and am always impressed when someone can make me change my mind about a character. I respect that, and pay homage to it here.  
> But, on to the relevant thing (no, we hadn't reached it, yet): Back when this fic was conceived, it was in vogue here to call Ichigo's inner hollow "Shiro(saki)", which, to be fair, some people still do. I, meanwhile, developed a few headcanons of my own watching _Bleach_. They've pretty much been thoroughly debunked, but this fic was always going to be retrogressive, so, sorry, House Rules.  
> At the time, I thought that Ichigo's Inner Hollow and Old Man Zangetsu were the same entity, but two sides of the same coin (like a split personality). I assumed that Zangetsu partially hollowfied when Ichigo did, back in the Shattered Shaft. This would mean that Hollow Ichigo didn't exist until the Shattered Shaft. I think you see where I'm going with this, and why I bothered to point it out to you.
> 
> Thanks for your patience, if you actually read all that. Hope it clears some stuff up.

"The Shattered Shaft". When asked ever after for the meaning of despair, its memory returned to haunt him. It was a place designed towards just that end. The bleakest point of a man's life. The darkest point before the metaphorical dawn. Bound and helpless, knowing that a fate worse than mere _death_ was imminent.

Born of despair, desperation drove its victims deep into themselves, finding hidden reserves of power and courage to see them through. Designed for those with just such a birthright, only those born of death might withstand it, and that was far from a given.

Bound, helpless, sealed into a form with no special abilities to see it through, pain a constant companion and distraction, and the ever-present knowledge that he was running out of time.

It gave ample time for reflection. The sensation of the links of his Chain of Fate coming alive and consuming _themselves_ came with a spiritual kind of pain, assisted by all sorts of memories and thoughts.

Why wasn't he dead? Ichigo wondered this to himself, as he had ever since he had woken up, somehow _alive_ , in Urahara's shop.

How could it be? Most of his memory of that night, the night when he had fought and lost to those two soul reapers, was hazy, probably due to all that blood that he had lost. But, he had vowed to save Rukia. To recover his powers as a soul reaper and to save her. He owed her.

He remembered the night that he had first acquired his soul reaper powers from Rukia—but wrongly. In his memory, it was raining, and he was defeated. Still, he knew that that wasn't what had happened. He knew that she had given him her powers—set herself knowingly up for an execution, as it turned out—and yet she hadn't hesitated. It was as he'd later asked her—when she'd come between him and the hollow, had she been thinking of her _duty_?

There had been a moment of crystal clear certainty then, that she'd been acting on reflex, driven by memories of her own, but it had gone and soon been forgotten. He'd had to protect that little kid from the hollow, after all, and that battle, easy as he now knew that it had been, had been distraction enough for him to forget that certainty. Until now.

He owed her. Not only had she put her life on the line, but had made it possible for him to protect others, as he'd always _felt_ he must somehow do. From when he'd been just a little kid, coming across the residue of spirits who had he now knew not passed on, but been _consumed_ , he had felt responsible. Rukia had given him a chance to tip the scales back. To save a hundred lives for every one that he had once failed.

Not that all the lives in the world would make up for the loss of the heart of his family. That was doubtless the weight that kept his feet now rooted to the ground, weighed down. He'd even tried running up the walls—

Rukia had given him a tremendous gift, and now he would repay her. He just had to regain his soul reaper powers. Somehow. Even though he was fairly sure that Rukia's brother had destroyed them. Even though he had no idea how to access them, or how to recognise them if he somehow successfully stumble upon them.

He missed the simplicity of the first phase of his training. At least then he'd known what he had to do. Now, he had no notion as to how to even start. Nor was Hat'n'Clogs giving him any.

Looking up the steep, smooth sides of the pit into which Hat'n'Clogs had sent him, Ichigo knew that the only way out was success. A flash of insight provided him with the knowledge that he was _best_ down here. He was down here because a soul reaper would somehow be able to scale that high wall (hadn't Rukia once or twice said something about being able to _fly_?), but a hollow lumbered along the ground. It was the first line of defence.

If he fail.

Well, he'd best not fail, then. If only he could _think_. But, the pain of his rapidly deteriorating Chain of Fate made thought difficult.

He tried to enter the mindset he'd used when trying to track down spirit ribbons. There was something—a shift in focus.

Something outside his body gave a sharp twinge. His concentration broke. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and tried again, sitting down cross-legged on the ground. There was no point in trying to cheat his way out of this trial.

This time, he was interrupted by a voice without. It was that boy Jinta, redheaded like that Soul Society lieutenant. Renji Abarai.

"That's too bad," Jinta said. He seemed to mean it. "Oh, and one last thing: The final encroachment—it's _nothing_ like the others."

There was no time to wonder what he meant, let alone to question whether or not Hat'n'Clogs somehow cultivated this weird passive disinterested interest in his associates, for pain beyond his prior imaginings exploded all around him, and then swarmed his body like a whole hive of bees. He understood why hollows screamed as they became hollows, now.

But he refused to become one. He built himself a shield of spiritual pressure and tried to push against the inevitable, to separate himself from his own traitorous Chain of Fate, or to shield himself from it. His hand reached up, as if instinct, to guard his face against the forming hollow mask.

Then, he was no longer in the Shattered Shaft.

* * *

He fell down from a hole in the sky, into an expanse of water so pure that it threw back the light of the stars in the sky. A million of them floated on the water's surface, and he appeared between heaven and earth. Or, in this case, heaven and sea. Japan is an archipelago, but you didn't need to ever have been to the ocean to know that it was saltwater. Which this was. This was either an ocean or a sea. Not freshwater. Not a lake.

There was nowhere to stand, nothing to grab hold of. He was drowning.

"Well, you finally made your way here," said a voice. He had a moment to register a figure, crouched down on the water's surface and peering down at him with an odd look, before the waves pulled him under again.

He was wrong. The water wasn't reflecting the light of the stars. There were stars underwater, a hundred million pinpricks of light like dandelion fluff or fireflies.

After a moment, the figure who'd crouched above the surface had followed him beneath the water in an elegant dive. She swam with the grace of a fish or a mermaid, hair billowing in black curls about her face, which had settled into a rather irked expression, grey eyes narrowed at him, red lips pursed into what was almost a sneer. Her almost black kimono was covered in stars, which made her seem to blend into her surroundings. He could only track her progress by her exposed face and by the bright white flowers on the cuffs and hems of her kimono. She seemed disembodied, like a campfire ghost.

She was scolding him. "You know, Zangetsu didn't sacrifice his life just so that you could immediately go turn yourself into a hollow. Your dumbassery is really eroding the trust in our partnership, Kaien!"

What.

"Uh—I think you may be mistaking me for someone else," he said to her. And then realised that she had spoken underwater. And then realised that he had spoken underwater. And then realised that he was _breathing_ underwater.

Down beneath him, he saw a fissure, perhaps a trench, black against the navy blue of a moonless night. From this angle it looked almost like a gaping maw. It was eating stars.

"Really? Like whom?" the woman demanded. Her voice was a sort of medium pitch, but almost childish. He couldn't tell how old she was, but something about her reminded him of Karin. Perhaps it was the attitude.

She huffed and placed her hands on her hips. The effect was somehow not ruined by the fact that she was upside down, and he rightside up.

She had a point, but—

"We're in your soulscape. It used to be Sideways City, but Captain Hotshot tore it to shreds. That's what all those stars are."

"And Zangetsu—"

"He was your zanpakuto, dumbass! Now, are you gonna waste time chatting, or are you gonna find your soul reaper powers and get us the hell out of here?"

Wow. He…thought he'd better think more about all of what she'd just said later. Most of it made little to no sense. At least he'd been given a name for his zanpakuto, although the way this woman was talking about it made it seem as though it had _died_. Could they even _do_ that?

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, freaking out even though there was no time for it. "Where are we? What's going on?"

He saw her mouth open to speak, eyes suddenly wide and earnest, but he couldn't read lips, and the words she spoke were inaudible as if swallowed by the waters around them. That made no sense. She'd communicated everything else just fine.

She seemed to try several times. A look of what seemed to be physical pain crossed her features, but then she sighed and turned back to look down at him, towards his face. She had gone limp. Even her arms hung loose at her sides, now.

"You can't hear that, yet. Too much turbulence here. We'll talk when you've got your powers back. I promise. Your powers are in one of these stars. I can't help you find it. You have to do that yourself."

Ichigo nodded. That seemed to track with everything else going on. In other words: it made no freaking sense.

These new rules—all these new soul reaper rules that Rukia had never told him because he was supposed to just be a _substitute_ —seemed arbitrary and designed by some sinister, cackling villain to make procedure as difficult as possible.

The only thing he could think of to do that might work, when he knew damn well he sucked at tracking spiritual pressure (thanks muchly, Uryu Ishida), was hoping that somehow his "soulscape" came complete with spirit ribbons, even though he didn't see why it _would_.

Later, he would reflect that this whole process probably was as it was because his soul was breaking down, and the internal laws that had heretofore governed it were likewise all up in the air. For the moment, he stood by his theory of active malevolence from a higher power.

It worked in his favour, to the extent that when he found enough inner peace to shift his focus sideways to the location of Spiritual Pressure Sensing, he caught sight of a red spirit ribbon, and caught a brief glimpse of the bastard himself. " _Ichigo Kurosaki…don't you know…that a soul reaper's spirit ribbon is red?_ " Ishida asked, and then dissipated.

Ichigo swam over to the bright red star. Now that he'd found it, the entire situation seemed somehow less urgent. Enough so to turn back to face the woman, who was now rightside up with him, with her right arm clutching a closed pink fan across her side, staring at him with a decidedly haughty posture.

"What are you waiting for, Kaien? The world is _falling apart_!"

And, there was that unfamiliar name again. But, he knew that she had a point. He remembered the mask trying to form in the outside world, the way his Chain of Fate was chewing at itself in a truly twisted sort of horror hunger.

He reached for the star, and when he stuck his fingers on it, he found he could open it, like the flaps of a box. A blue hilt was visible through this tiny aperture.

"Hurry!" the woman cried. This time, he did not look back. Somehow, he reached through the too-small space. His hand closed over the hilt, and he gave a tug.

Stars exploded all around him. He was fairly sure the ocean fried. He blacked out.

* * *

"Hey," said a voice. It was lower in pitch than he'd heard it yet. Calm. Collected. Soothing. "Are you okay, now?"

He opened his eyes. The face of the woman from before stared down at him, crouched as she'd been when he'd first seen her. He groaned, pressing his hands against what he mistook for smooth glass as he sat up. He put a hand to his head, as if he had a headache. It was more because it seemed the sort of thing you did when you woke up after passing out than because of his mild headache.

He caught sight of the sleeve of those black robes that soul reapers all wore (someone had called it a _shihakusho_ ). Although there'd been no time for observations, he remembered that he'd been wearing his baseball tee-shirt and jeans when he'd first arrived here. What his soul had been wearing because his body had been wearing it.

The presence of the black robes now suggested that, whatever had happened, he'd beaten the clock, and succeeded in restoring his soul reaper powers.

As perhaps did the presence of this young woman. If she was what he thought she was.

He sat up, and realised with a burst of inspiration that he was sitting on the surface of the water that had pulled him under, before. He was sitting on _water_. The hell?

"You! You said you'd answer my questions when we got out of this mess. Are we out of this mess? Are you going to answer my questions, now?" He leapt to his feet, pointing a finger at her. He couldn't help shouting in a panicky rush.

She just sort of climbed to her feet without needing to brace herself, and _giggled_.

"Aww, aren't you adorable? I guess that's the best answer I'll get to my question. Hmm. I don't know how Zangetsu managed you. Or how he would have, if Hotshot hadn't killed him. What can you do?"

She stood there, arms akimbo, and beamed at him. "Okie, let me explain some things to you. This here is your inner world—your soulscape. It's actually what was buried underneath (sort of) Sideways City, which was your previous inner world. Everyone has an inner world, I think, but only soul reapers can access them. When Rukia gave you soul reaper powers, it created a zanpakuto spirit to inhabit that inner world. That was Zangetsu."

She paused a moment, looking out across the vast waters still covered in bobbing stars. It seemed to be out of respect for Zangetsu's sacrifice.

"As you fought hollows to protect Karakura, you and Zangetsu formed a synergistic bond. Then Captain Kuchiki killed him when destroying your inner world. However, you were born with an inner world already buried underneath Sideways City. This one."

She removed her left hand from her hip to wave it around in an arc, and he took that opportunity to look around at the still waters. The sky overhead twinkled with stars, too, for the moment. It struck him as possible that perhaps daylight never came here.

" _That's_ because of the cycle of reincarnation. Remember what Rukia told you: the Quincies were wiped out because their abilities _destroyed_ hollows, removing them from the cycle of reincarnation, instead of recycling them. Soul reapers tend to reincarnate as humans with high spiritual pressure."

She pulled out an Urahara-style pink handfan with flowers on it, and pointed it at him.

"Soul reapers like _you_ , Kaien! But here's the thing: Sideways City was _Ichigo's_ inner world. Zangetsu was _Ichigo's_ zanpakuto. When that inner world was destroyed, it destroyed all of that, scraped off the layer that was covering up me and Starlit Sea. You had to reach down real deep—into your past life—to get back your soul reaper powers. The only reason you could do it was because you were born with soul reaper powers. I'll explain more about that later—wouldn't want to overwhelm you. The important thing is that you've sort of…muddied the waters, and are in part who you were before you died and reincarnated as Ichigo Kurosaki. You even get to reuse your zanpakuto! It's my pleasure!"

Ichigo buried his head in his hands. This was all so surreal. "I don't believe you," he said flatly. He really had no reason not to believe her other than that life had decided to become one long rollercoaster ride and he wanted a break. He didn't even really mean it.

"Did you decide to dye your hair black, then?" the woman asked, in what had to be the mother of all non-sequiturs.

"…No," he said, wondering what _hair_ had to do with anything.

She snorted. It was a surprisingly undignified sound, but then she seemed to be made of a strange combination of dignified formality and casual crassness. "Well, you can't see yourself, but let me tell _you_ ; right here and now you look just like my old master, Kaien Shiba. Black hair, blue eyes, badge and all."

There was a sort of creeping unease that came with these words. He couldn't even really take them all in, but—

"I don't know what you look like _out there_ —" she gesticulated upwards, towards the middle of the sky whence he had come, "—but _in here_ , I can say that you look just like him. It started when _Hat'n'Clogs_ cut your Chain of Fate. That _killed_ you, you know. Only if you regained your soul reaper powers could you return to your human life. But it brought you closer to your past life, because _everything_ became a past life.

"In order to save your soul from becoming a hollow, you had to muddy the waters, mix your two lives, past and present, together. Your spiritual pressure has almost certainly changed to something a bit less _Ichigo_ , too—although I could be wrong on that front. You always _were_ Kaien Shiba, after all, even if those memories and abilities remained lost to you until now."

There was definitely something ominous in the way she said "until now", but Ichigo forewent thinking about _what_ for the impulse of the moment: trying to catch his own reflection in the water. But, it did no good—the water reflected only the image of whatever was in the sky: stars, and probably sun, moon, and clouds, if any of those ever came here (he doubted there'd be airplanes or satellites, if he and this woman were the only inhabitants).

"I don't know who Kaien Shiba _is_ ," he said. "My name's Ichigo Kurosaki, got that?"

Her gaze softened. There was a glimmer of pain behind her eyes, but mostly, she just seemed sympathetic. "Of course. We'll take things slow—to the extent that life lets us. But, I kept you in here after you regained your powers for a reason. You see—"

"Wait a minute! We need to get back out there! Hat'n'Clogs'll be wondering what the hell I'm doing! I have to finish his stupid tests before he'll okay our invasion of Soul Society—"

"Shut up, Ichigo!" the woman snarled. "This is important! Stop your panicking—time moves at a tenth of its speed when you're in your inner world. For every ten seconds we spend in here, only one passes out there. You're _fine_."

His mouth snapped shut.

"The most pressing thing is that hole you saw down beneath the water—you saw that it was eating the stars of your inner world. It's stopped for now, but I think you need to hear the whole story, even if it is a bit long. I'll summarise.

"Back when you were Kaien Shiba, at the end, what killed you, there was a hollow named Metastacia that could hollow out soul reaper spirit bodies and inhabit them—I suppose you'd call it possession. A whole squad was sent out to dispatch it, including your wife, Miyako—yes, I said _wife_ , quit your spluttering—and it was using her body to murder her own men. (She was the third seat of Squad Thirteen.)

"Your captain has always been a highly philosophical man. It wasn't enough for him to know that battle was imminent—he had to figure out for his own sake what sort of justified battles there were. He thought there were two: a battle to protect others, what you've been doing out in Karakura; and a battle to preserve honour.

"You and I, we came to the conclusion that there were actually three. The third is to protect the bonds shared between comrades-in-arms. You fight with others as a team, because you form a bond called "heart" with your compatriots. As long as you don't die alone, your heart lives on with those you fought alongside.

"Captain—well, he understood it in his own terms, because that was what was relevant. By using Miyako's body to kill her own men, Metastacia had defiled her honour. You asked to fight Metastacia one-on-one."

She paused, bowing her head so that she could look up at him askance. "You _idiot_. Not that you knew Metastacia's trick. If you try to fight Metastacia with a zanpakuto, it dissolves into spirit particles, leaving you without a weapon. No soul reaper who'd faced him ever lived long enough to discover that that was only temporary. The zanpakuto eventually reforms. It's only dematerialised and locked away, not broken and destroyed like Zangetsu was. Regardless, you were left with only kido as a viable means of attack. What happened was inevitable."

Ichigo couldn't tell if it was his ability to read between the lines or hidden memory that made his heart pound in his ears, or his hands shake. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

"It's as Rukia said: once you become a hollow, there's no going back." The woman closed her eyes, and winced. "Poor Rukia. Thankfully, you only got partway into the process. Like now, it was stopped before you became a real hollow, merging with Metastacia."

Why "poor Rukia"? Did Rukia have something to do with this? A memory that perhaps influenced her later actions?

"Rukia is a member of Squad Thirteen. She's one of the few to have seen Metastacia and lived to tell the tale. She watched it consume you. Captain tried to protect her… but it wasn't enough. Metastacia hadn't fully possessed you when Rukia accidentally ran you through with her zanpakuto. I can only imagine how she felt. She'd always admired you."

He looked up at the zanpakuto spirit, and put his hands in pockets he hadn't realised were there before. "Was it raining?" he asked, voice low and grim, thinking of the night that Rukia had given him her powers. The only other time Rukia would have run him through with her zanpakuto.

The woman blinked. She didn't seem to have expected that. Kaien's inner world was covered in water. But, a sea was not the same thing as rain.

"Yes," she said. "It was raining, and Rukia was crying, and Captain was shaking, although I think part of it was his illness—but Rukia, when she killed us, she freed us to reenter the cycle of reincarnation, instead of whatever happened to the rest of Metastacia's victims. It was an unusual hollow. I can't be sure what happened to the others it consumed. Mostly because of that crevice down there."

A chill crept up his spine, and he could feel the goosebumps on his arms. He was completely dry; there was no other excuse.

"You were reborn with Metastacia still lurking deep in your soul—under the surface, like me, only deeper down. And now, Captain Urahara is hollowfying you, even though that's what got him exiled from Soul Society!"

What. What the _hell_ —? "Captain Urahara"? Was that Hat'n'Clogs? And…hollowfying? What?

"He wouldn't be helping us if he were really some sort of villain, would he? I think we should give him a chance. He's been nothing but helpful to us—"

He didn't know, did he?

Okay, okay, so Hat'n'Clogs was apparently a former _captain_ , and apparently had a history of turning people into hollows? But, given that he hasn't been cheerfully building a hollow army, Ichigo thought it might have just been a misunderstanding—perhaps his "victims" had just been people in a situation like his, and Hat'n'Clogs had just been trying to do the right thing—

Hat'n'Clogs hadn't needed to rescue him after Captain Kuchiki had left him bleeding to death on the sidewalk. He hadn't needed to give Rukia all the materials she'd needed to help him protect the town. He hadn't needed to do what he'd just done—to train Ichigo to go save Rukia from execution. Particularly not when it meant that all his skeletons might be exposed to the light of day.

"Okay, okay, sure, whatever. We'll see how he behaves and whether or not he's a threat and not jump to conclusions like we're Central 46. The important thing is that, as you were just becoming a hollow, you've sort of…fused part of yourself with Metastacia. It's dormant for the moment, but we'll see how long that lasts. Just FYI. Now get back out there and kick ass."

He stared at her. He was going to have such a reaction when his brain kicked back in. "Uh. You're my zanpakuto, right?" he asked.

She frowned, and her left arm returned to her hip. "Right. We're partners, but that doesn't mean I get to spill everything to you at once. If you think the headache you have right now is bad, just try dealing with having, like, three centuries of knowledge crammed into your skull at once. But if you need my help…let's see if you can hear it this time. Just say: 'Rankle the seas and the skies…Nejibana!' I'm always game to kick ass. As long as it follows our Rules for Just Engagement. Or is just practice. Now go out there and _practice_ with Captain Urahara, dumbass!"

She reached out to him, and handed over her pink fan. It slowly morphed into a blade with a blue hilt.

"Huh, what—?"

The world faded white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I waited so long to rewrite this chapter that Nejibana turned into some odd sarcastic-innocent hybrid of Orihime, Rukia, and Karin.


End file.
